Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Into photography? Then you might just get hooked on Snapshot Adventures: Secret of Bird Island.

Here you can give your best shot at bird photography while searching for your grandfather, a famous bird photographer who went missing 6 months ago. He however managed to leave you a map, his treasured camera and a half-empty journal, all in a shoebox with your name on it. Along the way, you'll meet his colleagues, his old friends as well as a stranger or two, solve clues leading to his disappearance while taking on assignments (day and night) at different locations to capture a variety of birds - in different poses too such as flying, singing, eating, or preening. Assignments get increasingly difficult the further you are into the game, such as from only needing to capture 3 3-star photos of a blue jay at the beginning to capturing 5 5-star photos of a Yellow-throated Warbler in flight later on. If you have extra film and time left after completing an assigned task, you can then earn bonus points by snapping at other species.

Sounds challenging? You bet, especially when the birds are flying around or refusing to stand still for you to get a close up shot or partially hidden by bushes, leaves, etc. Furthermore, you get to choose which of the shots you think look best at the end of each level by selecting between two side-by-side shots and once you do so, points and star-ratings will be revealed to see if you've made the right choice. Also, the best shots will grace the cover of magazines while the rest can be viewed from your journal.

To make things easier, you do earn some useful tools such as the zoom lens (2x, 4x, 6x), which will enable you to take closeup shots, and the night camera with flash and silencer suitable for night bird watching activities. Other interesting gadgets would be bird seed (to get them to eat), flight simulator (to make them fly), coffee (to slow down the bird's movements), and the greatest of all tools, the stopwatch, which will freeze everything for ~10seconds so you can then shoot all you want. Ah..if only we could do that in real life photography =P

Once you've solved the mystery, you can continue playing still but this time try your hands on creating your own bird species instead. With this tool, you can create any bird you like (body style, beak style, wingspan, color, etc), and name it any name you want to. You can also download custom-made birds created by other users. This way, you'll always have new species to add to your journal ;)

Real life bird-watching might not be a common hobby particularly in this heat and humidity (and mosquitoes!) but you can now sit in the comforts of your own home and enjoy what the games has to offer while polishing your photography skills as well (figuratively!) =)